Winter’s Solstice Alaska
This year, 2007, the winter solstice will be at 9:08 PM (Alaskan Standard Time) in the evening of Friday, 21st of December.
I’d like to wish all my readers a happy holiday season — whichever one you celebrate, or lack thereof. Thank you so much for making this blog a fun and successful experience for me!
Winter’s Solstice for many Alaskans is a time of celebration as we understand that even as winter’s grip takes hold of our great land in the far north that tomorrow we will be heading back into the light. Day by day and night by night the days slowly grow longer at first as the darkness gives way to the full light of summer.
Like all the mysteries that emerge from time with no footnotes, it is left to each of us to find what meaning we can make of them. But perhaps this one monument from the time of myth gives us, every year, one small hint.
No matter what time and the universe can throw at us, we still go on . . . to remind ourselves what we have and we shall endure and prevail, we continue to mark our small planet's turn around our home star. We mark it with many ceremonies large and small every year when, at this moment in time, the sun begins to rise higher to warm us again in our small patch of heaven.
We are still here to bear witness, no matter how shrill the Acolytes of Zero, to the mystery and the gift. We're a tough race and a rough species. It will take more than a few degrees Fahrenheit or Centigrade, one way or another, to finish us.
The light of the solstice streaming to us and soon after, the light of the world arrives. Reminders that no winter is without end and that the gift is given to us again, if we can but receive it.
Today is the time of the longest night and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Life expresses itself in cycles like the seasons. Season to season, life and nature dance in step with its own rhythms. The changing of the seasons affects our body, mind and spirit. Change is inevitable. Only the present moment is real. Day follows night . . . Spring follows Winter. Embrace the changing of the seasons of your life.
The darkness is necessary. Honor the dark before welcoming in the light. This is the time that animals hibernate and nature sleeps. This is a natural time for us to let go - release our regrets and resentments into the darkness; time to turn inward and reflect. We need time and space in the quietness and solitude to balance the rhythm of our lives.
Winter Solstice is the return of light - a promise of hope. It's a faith in the cycles of our lives; it's a faith in the quiet darkness.
The old must end in order for the new to begin . . .
time of letting go . . .
time of death of those things that no longer serve us . . .
time of celebration . . .
time to honor the silence, the darkness and the mystery of life . . .
time to welcome in the light.
How will you honor the changing seasons of your life? What will you do to first embrace the quiet, solitude of the darkness of winter, let go of those things that no longer serve you and then, welcome in the light of the new season of your life?
Just remember . . . the warmth of summer is coming and the time till our creel is full with the food and fish of life . . . So rejoice . . . look up & see when the ‘lights’ are out with that familiar greenish hue from the heavens!
Ice
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